Identity and Service
The Sacred Oath:
1935 recruits The image of the soldiers who had just sworn their allegiance , now outside the Great Synagogue.
"Vilkaviškis Recruits, 1935. A generation of young men ready to serve, led by the community’s spiritual guide, Rabbi Grin. This image represents the peak of Jewish integration in independent Lithuania."
Shmarihu Pustapetski: One Man’s Odyssey through the 20th Century
Shmarihu "Zunia" Pustapetski serves as a living mirror to the 20th-century Jewish experience in Vilkaviškis. His journey began in the vibrant cultural heart of the town, transitioning from a student at the Hebrew Gymnasium to a dashing officer in the Lithuanian military, where he once led Jewish recruits to the Great Synagogue for holiday prayers. After pursuing a career and building a family in Czechoslovakia, the gears of history turned against him; following the Soviet annexation of Lithuania in 1941, Shmarihu was arrested and sent to what he described as his "Private Gulag" in the Siberian taiga. Despite years of grueling labor and the dark shadow of the Soviet prisoner system, his story is ultimately one of resilience. Returning from exile, he fulfilled the Zionist dream he had held since his youth in the Beitar movement, eventually settling in Israel. Standing with his grandson at a Bar Mitzvah in Rehovot decades later, Shmarihu provided the ultimate visual proof that the spirit of Vilkaviškis could be suppressed, but never broken.
